Without the Truth

Chapter 3

The sounds of the early morning city and the bright sun shining through the still open window woke me up. I changed into warm leggings, a sweatshirt, and a leather jacket. I picked up a pen from my counter and scrawled the address from the apartment in the picture onto my wrist. I slid the Polaroids into an envelope and placed the envelope carefully into my backpack, along with some granola bars, a bottle of water, and a pair of gloves. The extra supplies seemed out of place next to the journal, pencil pouch, and recorder I always kept in my bag. To anyone else, some food and a simple pair of gloves would seem completely normal, but, to me, it almost seemed like survival gear. My journal and things were always kept in my backpack, so everything else seemed foreign to the landscape of the fabric that made up such an ordinary thing. Grabbing the keys to my apartment, I took a deep breath, pulled on a hat, and locked the door behind me.

The street was already filled with people walking around, going about their Saturday morning like nothing had changed. I realized, for most of them, nothing had. Although I seemed like my life had been modified drastically in the past twenty-four hours, for almost everyone else, their lives were exactly the way they had been for weeks, months, or maybe even years. Every person walking past me on the street had a life as detailed and complicated as my own, but only mine had been affected by yesterday's events.

I stepped up to the curb and hailed a cab. One pulled over and I slid inside. The interior of the taxi smelled like musty body odor and old socks. I sat with my back away from the chair and my arms around the backpack in front of my knees. I tried to touch the least surface area of the itchy seat possible.

"Where to?" The taxi driver asked, without even glancing back at me.

I looked down at my wrist. "372 Neptune Ave."

He made no sign that he heard me. He simply kept staring straight ahead. The light changed, and the car lurched forward. I stared out the window and my thoughts drifted out of the car. What did I expect to find? Why was I even doing this? It was just some old, rundown apartment building in a sketchy part of town. It would probably just be some crazy old cat lady living there, but I guess I wouldn't know until I got there.

I don't know what compelled me to do it, but I pulled out my recorder and fiddled with the knobs and buttons before turning it on. The little red light flashed on and off like the stoplights in my hometown would late at night. When no one else was awake or home, sometimes I would take walks. After Livy died, I had a hard time falling asleep, so I would wander around for sometimes hours at a time. When I was a senior, the insomnia got so bad that I sometimes went for days at a time without sleep. It got a little better in college. It was really the journal that kept me going. I could wander anywhere in the world in any time from the security of my own bed through writing. That was what helped me through it. I hung onto those words scrawled across the page like a lifeline. That ink was my lifeboat, that journal kept me afloat.

My mom gave me that journal before she passed. That was part of the reason it was so important to me- she had been the one to teach me to express myself. She taught me things I would never have survived without. The journal had come from her, and while it was the last thing she gave me before she died, it was what brought me life.

Words intrigued me, and I often found myself getting lost in a book for hours on end. Sometimes, I would stay up until 3 AM on school nights to finish a book. I got to know the librarians at both the public and school libraries pretty quickly. When I started seeing  my father and Livy less and less, I spent more and more time in the realm of books. After school, I would walk to the public library and let the musty comforting smell of books surround me and hold and comfort me in a way my mother would never be able to again.

We turned onto a narrow street and I figured we must be getting close. The sun slipped behind a cloud and I felt my stomach churn. I wasn't sure why, but suddenly, it was like an ominous fog had overcome the neighborhood. Out the window, I watched the street signs as they flew past. I took a double take as I saw the sign reading, "Neptune Ave."